Cautionary Tales Presents Vultures from Lost Hills: Dark Canyon
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Hello, Tim Harford here. Today I'm taking you to Malibu, California to explore one of the city's great unsolved mysteries. In 2009, a woman named Mitrice Richardson was released from the Malibu Lost Hills Sheriff's Station. She never made it home. Nearly a year later, Mitrice's remains were discovered in a canyon six miles from the station.

Everyone knows something horrible happened to Mitrice, and for 15 years, the Sheriff's Department has failed to solve her case. From Pushkin Industries, host Dana Goodyear is investigating what happened to Mitrice in Lost Hills, Dark Canyon. Today, you'll hear the first episode, and if you want to hear more, you can find the show in your favourite podcast player. And now...

Over to Dana. A couple of years ago, I found a video buried on the internet, deep in the metadata behind the 404 error codes.

In it, a young black woman is questioning a middle-aged white guy who's sitting on the edge of his bed drinking a beer. Did you hear banging on the door? Talking at the door like they just shut it on her or something. The person they're talking about is Mitrice Richardson, a 24-year-old black woman who disappeared in Malibu in 2009 and whose remains were discovered there 11 months later.

They're talking about the day of her disappearance. The interview is being shot vertical, seemingly on a cell phone, with the guy taking up the whole frame. He looks like an aging California golden boy, with gray and blonde hair, a tan, and a barrel chest.

He's relaxed, wearing a sky blue Henley shirt tucked into a pair of camouflage shorts. So I really couldn't see her face, but I could see her shadow. While he says this, he gestures broadly, waving his big paws around in the air. In the light of the night, you know, with the light on the front porch. And she was screaming at something, you know, and it was pretty loud. And I'm thinking, God damn, it's 4.30 in the morning. What was she saying? She was saying, God damn, buddy, you know, we struggle, you know. She was...

He got curious. The scene was so out of place in this quiet neighborhood. A young woman, alone, in the early morning hours, shouting?

she might be in trouble. The interviewer, her name's Raven Masterson, she made the video sometime after Mitrice's remains were found.

Like so many people, she wanted to figure out what happened to Mitrice. Because the death of Mitrice Richardson is Malibu's most horrifying, notorious, and scandalous unsolved case. For 15 years, Mitrice's story has been shrouded in mystery. The scant clues have been worked over a thousand times to no end. There's no resolution, no satisfying explanation, and no one has been held accountable.

Many people blame the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for her death. Some take it farther, and this is how Raven leans in the video. They even think a deputy may have killed Mitrice. Mitrice was arrested at Joffrey's Restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway on September 16, 2009. She was released from Lost Hills Station at 12.25 a.m. on the 17th.

After that, there was one official sighting of her at 6:30 a.m. in the backyard of a house in Montanito, a secluded neighborhood off Malibu Canyon. That's about six miles from the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station. But the guy in the video, he says he saw her too, two hours earlier at 4:30 a.m., making a commotion in the front yard of that same house. Montanito, Mountain Nest.

It's a tight-knit community in the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains. Most people in LA don't even know it exists. It's got creeks and horses and neighbors that have known each other, in some cases, for generations. Kids run around barefoot. There's a big 4th of July parade and an annual square dance. It's a place out of time.

It feels like the rustic, horsey California of the 1940s, mixed with the freewheeling party culture of the 1970s. And it's got none of the flash of coastal Malibu or the nearby gated communities of Calabasas. This is California, so of course there have been a couple of waves of gentrifiers. But among the old-timers, the people who practically homesteaded there in the 50s, there's a distinct backwoods, ingrown feeling.

And, it bears mentioning, the whole place is extremely white. With one notable exception. Will Smith, one of the most famous black men in America, owns an estate in Montenito. But I don't think he frequents the Square Dance or the Fourth of July parade. It's hard to express how unlikely it is that Mitrice would end up in this isolated community. There isn't even a sign for Montenito on Malibu Canyon. How would she even have known it was there?

Eleven months after Mitrice Richardson disappeared, park rangers checking a known illegal pot grow found her remains in a treacherous canyon above Montanito called Dark Canyon. During this time, the Santa Monica Mountains were notorious for harboring large marijuana operations run by organized crime syndicates. These massive grows were often protected with armed guards who would camp out in the canyons for extended periods.

The Rangers had disrupted a dark canyon grow in July 2009, two months before Mitrice's disappearance. When they returned in August of 2010, they didn't report any fresh signs of pot-growing activity. But there in the dormant grow were the remains of a black woman. She was mostly bones, a skeleton with small flaps of mummified skin remaining. And she was naked.

From the beginning, every aspect of the case seemed off. What was wrong? How she was arrested, how she was released, how she was searched for, how her remains were discovered, how her remains were recovered, and how her death was investigated. All of it looked like a colossal screw-up on the part of law enforcement, starting with the Lost Hills cops.

And what the sheriff's department has said about the case over the years, it just makes no sense. Their refrain essentially is, some cases can't be solved. This is a sheriff's spokesman three days after Mitrice's body was found. Homicide will continue their investigation. It's likely that we can never find out exactly how she got there, but they're going to do their very best to...

And they're still saying Mitrice's death will always be a mystery. But I don't accept that. It's a stubborn, strange, problematic case. But I do think it's solvable. Because someone in that secluded, tight-knit community of Montanito knows what happened to her. I'm Dana Goodyear, and this is Lost Hills. Season 4, Dark Canyon.

Episode 1: Vultures Right off Pacific Coast Highway, across from the Malibu Lagoon and next to the gas station, there's a small memorial. It's a rock with a plaque on it, commemorating the life of a man who was known as Malibu Joe.

Malibu Joe was Joe Costello. He was originally from Genoa, Italy. But starting in the mid-1950s, he became a beloved Malibu figure, riding his bike slowly up and down PCH in a fedora and a baggy overcoat. In the summer of 1988, he was beaten and left for dead in the oleander bushes where he lived, where the memorial is today. He died a few days later. He was 96 years old.

The Sheriff's Department investigated, but the killing was never solved, so no one was ever punished. Malibu Joe died two decades before Mitrice Richardson. The cases have nothing to do with one another, except this: Both Joe and Mitrice show moments of rupture. They're both signals that Malibu isn't what it seems. Malibu is not paradise. Sunshine, nature, beauty, health, wealth, and eternal youth

That's the myth. But if I've learned one thing reporting here, it's that every seductive surface has its dark side. The beauty is the danger. It makes you let down your guard and believe in the fantasy. The unspoiled wilderness hides unspeakable crimes. And a place like that, a place like that breeds monsters.

In the fall of 2009, Mitrice's disappearance was all over the local news. The mystery unraveled on a September night in 2009, right where the Pacific greets the shores of Malibu. It all started when Mitrice tried to leave Joffreys, a pricey restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway, without paying her bill. She was arrested and taken to Lost Hill Station, about 13 miles away.

They contacted her mother, who said that she will pick her up in the morning if you will keep her there. Deputy said, we will. But instead of staying at the station, Mitrice walked out into the Malibu night.

Her car was at a tow yard near PCH with her belongings inside. She was released at 12:30 a.m. No wallet, no cell phone, no credit cards, no car. She was gorgeous and charismatic and, as would later come out, she was in the midst of a mental health crisis.

A beauty contestant, an honor student, and now a missing person. According to her mom, she had no street savvy whatsoever, and she didn't know Malibu at all. Mitrice Richardson walked out of a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office and into a mystery that continues to baffle investigators.

And then the mystery became a horror. Eleven months later, the 24-year-old college graduate's remains were found here in Dark Canyon. She was naked and partially mummified. They discovered a skull, they discovered a pelvis, and they discovered a leg, just bones.

They determined officially, unequivocally, and unfortunately, it was Mitrice Richardson. Coroner's officials haven't determined the cause of death, and they say Richardson's body was in the canyon for more than six months. Whatever happened in Dark Canyon remains for the moment a dark secret. It's been 15 years since Mitrice disappeared, 14 years since her remains were found, and there's been no progress on her case.

There's no sign that law enforcement is actively working on it, but it's not a cold case. It's a, quote, active criminal investigation, which means the sheriff's department doesn't have to share information. And believe me, they take that very seriously. They do not like to talk about this case. ♪

In the midst of their silence, a sinister narrative has taken hold in the public imagination that the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, specifically the Lost Hills cops, are behind Mitrice's death. They deny this. But the idea lives on in a new generation of true crime TikTokers and YouTubers.

Welcome to another episode of Murder, Mystery, and Makeup Monday. Today's story is about Matrice Richardson. It kind of feels like that they were hiding something. The police work in this case was awful. Is this incompetence or a cover-up? I mean, they originally were trying to hide the fact that they had security footage. The previous captain was in on it and promoted for his cover-up job. I believe that Matrice Richardson was murdered and it was covered up by the L.A. County Sheriff's Office.

We know the cops took Maitrese to the station, and the cops let her go in the dark. This part is true. Undisputed fact. And then, what? How did she get from the station to Montenito, six miles away? How did she end up in Dark Canyon? Why was she naked? And what happened to her missing bones? Oh yeah, that's one more undisputed fact.

While most of Mitrice's bones were eventually accounted for, discovered in the canyon's heavy leaf litter, an important one has not been found. The fragile bone above the larynx that often breaks when a person is strangled. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry, and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So, buckle up.

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Mitrice Richardson's death is not officially a homicide. The autopsy reads, quote, while there is no evidence of antemortem trauma to the bones or the limited amount of tissue accompanying them, in the absence of internal viscera, internal injury cannot be completely ruled out. And, quote, in the absence of suitable specimens for toxicology testing, the possibility of fatal substance abuse cannot be ruled out.

And, quote, death due to exposure, snakebite, pneumonia, or other natural diseases also cannot be ruled out. Therefore, quote, both cause and manner of death remain undetermined, unquote.

Hello. Hi, how are you? I'm Dana. Dana, hi. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. I'm at the home of Lisa Scheinen. She's the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy of Mitrice's remains. She's also one of the world's foremost authorities on roller coasters. That is my big hobby, that and collecting butterflies. Her house, a normal-looking suburban house in Redondo Beach, is basically a natural history museum. So do you...

capture them in a net, and then... Come here, take a look. Shadow box frames filled with specimens are stacked in every corner. There's something called a killing jar, which you can make. It's a jar that has a plaster of Paris base, and then you pour in... You can use cyanide. When you screw the cap on, it's a closed environment, and it makes fumes that kill the butterfly. Basically put it to sleep in seconds.

Dr. Scheinen worked for the L.A. County Coroner's Office for 24 years. I was a deputy medical examiner at the L.A. County Coroner's Office, now retired. She worked on a lot of high-profile cases. She did the autopsies on the musicians Elliott Smith and Notorious B.I.G.,

But Mitrice's case stands out.

There are over the years some cases that do stick with me because of the circumstances of the case. There were so many unknowns. I mean, every time I've been near Malibu, I'd start thinking, well, geez, this is where Mitrice was. And this is just such a tragic case.

What she knew at the start was very basic. A few scattered pieces of clothing and a human skeleton had been found in an inaccessible canyon in Malibu.

The autopsy report details the pieces of Mitrice's clothing that were recovered from the remains site. 1. Navy blue or black padded bra. 2. Pink narrow belt, medium-large, alligator skin pattern. 3. Blue jeans, U.S. size 29, dirty, empty pockets. She'd been wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt and a pair of Vans when she left Lost Hills Station. She also had her California driver's license on her.

Those items, along with her hat and her keys, were missing. I had the investigator's report. This particular investigator's report was very straightforward. It said somebody from law enforcement was checking an area in a remote canyon and found the bones and the clothing. And the clothing was about 100 feet away from the skeleton.

You know, that's very limited information. Sometimes we have two or three pages of information, but not so in this case. So the first thing you do is you lay everything out in anatomical order and count what you've got. It was a nearly complete skeleton. It wasn't an intact skeleton in that everything was connected.

There were a lot of disarticulated bones, but there were some areas or certain blocks, like some parts of the lower extremities, parts of some of the upper extremities, were held together by a minimal amount of soft tissue. The soft tissue was mostly skin that had been mummified. Yeah, mummification...

It is a process. It can be accidental. If you have a body in a very dry, hot environment, the liquid essentially disappears. And what you get is this very leathery, rigid skin, sometimes some soft tissue. Usually the internal organs don't mummify. So it's mostly the skin, muscle, tendons, that type of thing.

There were a few small marks on some of the bones. The work, Dr. Scheinen thought, of animals scavenging the remains. The toes of the left foot were missing and that was consistent with animal activity.

But otherwise, the bones were intact. We look for things like fractures, which would usually mean some sort of a blunt force impact. We would look for any evidence of a gunshot wound or a stabbing. I didn't see any evidence of a physical traumatic injury.

There was also no way to tell if Mitrice had been sexually assaulted. Without soft tissue, there's really nothing that you can do or see, and sperm doesn't last. Without internal organs, there was no way to tell if she had overdosed. She wasn't found with cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, anything like that. She didn't really have a history of that type of thing. But again, without being able to do an accurate test, we don't know.

There was a small amount of leg muscle. Dr. Scheinen sent it in for toxicology, and that report came back inconclusive. As soon as Mitrice's remains were discovered, law enforcement began suggesting that Mitrice, experiencing a mental health episode, had probably wandered into Dark Canyon by herself and died from exposure, dehydration, venom, or something. Her death, they implied, was tragic but natural.

I asked Dr. Scheinen about the natural causes theory. In this particular case, there's several possibilities. There are rattlesnakes there. She could have been bitten by a rattlesnake. There's also fire ants. She could have had a severe allergic reaction to something. There's poison oak there that's horrible. It's everywhere. And some people are more sensitive than others. But why would the skeleton be naked?

Mitrice's bra, belt, and jeans were found hundreds of feet from the skeleton, and the belt was no longer on the jeans. A seasonal stream, Dark Creek, runs through the canyon, and cops suggested that a flash flood could have removed her clothes, carrying them downstream.

The winter Mitrice was missing was a rainy one. But even so, it takes a real contortion of logic to imagine a flood could strip a body naked and remove a belt from a pair of pants. Usually when we have a person who's dead with their clothes on, the clothes will stay on. Even if the body mummifies, the clothes are going to stay on. Water might wash off socks or something like that, but it's not going to completely undress a body.

Dr. Scheinen raised a different, natural explanation for Mitrice's nudity: hypothermia. There's something that happens with extreme cold called paradoxical undressing.

Normally when you're cold, your blood vessels will constrict to try to keep the blood more central in the body. Well, what happens with paradoxical undressing is there is a reflex dilatation of these blood vessels. So all of a sudden you get this rush of nice warm blood into these areas that were previously cold. And people who were probably a little bit out of it by this point,

think, oh my gosh, it's so warm, I'm too hot, and they take their clothes off. However, that tends to happen more often in extreme cold where there's snow. In mid-September 2009, the average overnight low at the weather recording station nearest to Dark Canyon was in the mid-60s. And I'm not sure it would get cold enough up in the canyon for that to happen, but it's just something to think about.

Obviously, there's another possible explanation: foul play. There are sinister reasons for the person not having their clothes on. I mean, could she have been sexually assaulted and they just took her clothes off and left them off? Who knows? It's certainly a real possibility. And what about the missing clothing?

And also the fact that it was an incomplete set of clothes and none of the additional items of clothing were ever found, including shoes, which I think have a little more weight than other clothing. As with everything about Mitrice's case, the story of her remains is a story of absences, gaps and guesses.

A forensic pathologist works by process of elimination, but with so little hard evidence, it was difficult to rule out anything. So the fact that I didn't see any trauma in the bones doesn't mean trauma didn't happen.

It's always possible that a gunshot wound can go through and through a body without hitting bone. Same thing for a stab wound. What's also possible is asphyxia or manual strangulation or maybe choked with a rope. The reason people die when they're strangled is you're cutting off the blood flow to the brain.

We're looking for things that reflect the fact that you are compressing neck structures. In the autopsy report, there's a list of missing bones: some bones from the hand, the left toes, presumably scavenged by animals, the tailbone, the xiphoid process at the bottom of the sternum, and a thin, fragile neck bone called the hyoid. The hyoid bone is the only floating bone in the body. It's not attached to any other bone.

It sits a little bit above the thyroid cartilage and it's essentially there as a base of muscle attachment. Because of its shape and position in the body, a broken hyoid can provide clear evidence of strangulation. For a forensic pathologist, it's a very significant bone.

And what's important about it is it's a U-shaped bone with the projections heading towards the back of the neck. So if it's compressed from both sides, which is what happens when you have a strangulation case with manual strangulation, is that you're putting pressure on the wings of the hyoid bone and they can fracture.

The thing with the hyoid is if you found it and it was broken, you could say, aha, this person was strangled. But like the missing clothing and her ID, Mitrice's hyoid bone was never found. Dr. Scheinen says Mitrice's case could still be resolved. With new evidence, the coroner could change the cause of death from undetermined. There was foul play involved. Someone could confess. You never know. It could be deathbed murder.

confession. Maybe they'll raid somewhere, someplace, and they'll find pictures of her. Anything is possible. They could just investigate the right person at the right time. Sometimes killers will save souvenirs that can be recognized as something from the person. Anything like that could happen. Anything could happen, including this. Someone who knows something could decide they've kept the secret for too long.

I love cycling and I'm eager to get my kids cycling too. It's a great way for them to stay fit and move around our home city independently. But of course, I also want them to be confident and safe, which is where Guardian Bikes comes in. The bike comes in a box and it's easy to assemble, with all the tools you need and simple online instructions. My son and I unboxed his bike together, spent about 20 minutes working as a team to assemble it

And then he was on the bike and ready to ride. The bike looks great and with the SureStop braking system it brakes quickly and safely without locking the front wheel and sending you over the handlebars. Guardian bikes offer a 365-day money-back guarantee covering returns, repairs and spare parts. Join hundreds of thousands of happy families by getting a Guardian bike today.

Visit GuardianBikes.com to save up to 25% off bikes. No code needed. Plus, receive a free bike lock and pump with your first purchase after signing up for the newsletter. That's GuardianBikes.com. Happy riding! If you're listening to this right now, you probably like to stay on top of things, which is why I want to mention The Economist. Today, the world seems to be moving faster than ever. Climate and economics, politics and culture, science and technology, wherever you look,

Events are unfolding quickly, but now you can save 20% off an annual subscription to The Economist so you won't miss a thing. The Economist broadens your perspective with fact-checked, rigorous reporting and analysis. It's journalism you can truly trust. There is a lot going on these days, but with 20% off, you get access to in-depth, independent coverage of world events through podcasts, webinars, expert analysis and even their extensive archives. So where

Whether you want to catch up on current events or dive deeper into specific issues, The Economist delivers global perspectives with distinctive clarity. Just to give an example, What's Next for Amazon as it turns 30? analyzes how Amazon's fourth decade looks like an area of integration for the company. Go beyond the headlines with The Economist. Save 20% for a limited time on an annual subscription. Go to economist.com and subscribe today.

Somebody sitting on the top step, the six railroad ties that we have in the backyard, I called down and said, are you okay?

And the answer was, yes, I'm just resting. And by the time we were, she was gone. That's Karen Smith speaking in an ABC7 documentary about Mitrice's disappearance. Karen's house is kind of a landmark in the neighborhood because it has a tennis court out front. Her husband, Bill Smith, who died in 2017, was a reporter on KTLA, a local TV news station. The Smiths called the cops, and later deputies confirmed that the woman who'd been in the backyard was Mitrice.

That's the one official sighting of Mitrice Richardson after she left Lost Hills Station. But then there's the other story, the unofficial story, the one the guy on the edge of his bed told Raven in the Lost interview.

He says he was heading down into the neighborhood from his spot on the mountain in the early morning hours. It was 4.30 in the morning.

That's the Smiths' house. But his story and the Smiths' story, they're really different.

The time, where my trees was on the property, they don't line up. And in his account, she wasn't quietly resting. She was audibly distressed. Yeah, the intonation in her voice. Yeah.

So, he says, he decided to hang out, just to make sure she was safe. But when she didn't seem to be in danger, he figured he should move along. I'm ready to get out of here. So I went home.

The woman, he says, was a total stranger to him at the time. He didn't know she was about to become a household name. And so I just didn't think much of it. You know, I didn't know that she'd just been arrested. It was the same night. Right. You know, the circumstance of the situation. Yeah.

He didn't know that deputies and search parties with horses, drones, and dogs were going to be pouring into sleepy little Montanito looking for her. This young woman who was not from Malibu, who he thought didn't really fit in there. I go, you know, I didn't think much about it until like two days later when all this came on the news. You know, what a whoop-de-woo-hoo.

Even though he didn't know any of that, he knew something out of the ordinary had happened. I told my landlord the next morning, I said, yeah, it was really good. I told him I was going to kill the other mountain last night. The next thing that happened, he saw the vultures. So many vultures. Vultures are a fact of life in Montanito. But this was more than he'd ever seen before. More than he could count. But, uh, so I just, I hear this, and I go to the theater, you know, and

I hear that she's missing and that, you know, whoop-de-woo and all this stuff's going on. And I'm like, sorry. I'm up at my spot, like, what? Two days later, I see, and I've seen a lot of vultures in my life. I lived out there 50 years, right? Right. Never seen a hundred vultures. Just swooned. I've seen like a thousand of them, you know, but I've never seen that many. So when did you see this? I saw this, like,

This story of the Montanito lifer who saw Mitrice the morning of her disappearance, it's not out there.

The recording and all the new information in it got buried under so much other information. So much misinformation, conspiracy theories, dead ends, lies. It was lost in the leaf litter detritus of the internet. But it's kind of like that hyoid bone, tiny and super significant. Because this ordinary guy sitting on the edge of his bed, drinking a beer, telling a story...

He makes what is probably the single most important statement of any witness in this case. I don't know any of the facts except for that DaCosta and I was the last one to see her alive. If he was the last one to see her alive, did he know something about her death? This season on Lost Hills.

I know one of them officers had something to do with it. It's like when I seen the news, it was like, damn, that's crazy, because I was like in a cell with this woman. Somebody said they actually followed her after she left. You think you heard someone talking about how the deputy could give her a ride somewhere? Yes, yes. It was a male deputy. I'm not going to murder anybody. It's going to be a cop. I mean, I had to sleep in front of my kid's door.

because the people were coming to kill my kids. I was dating her at the time, and she ended up going missing. And I was questioned by L.A. Homicide as a possible suspect for her disappearance. And one of the other guys came up and said, what do you know about my trees? He knew exactly where she was, which gives me the chills. Imagine if this was your kid that was swept up and put in a box like this. Lost Hills Season 4, Dark Canyon, is written and hosted by me, Dana Goodyear.

It was reported by me and Haley Fox, our senior producer. The show was created by me and Ben Adair. Lost Hills is a production of Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can binge the whole season right now, ad-free. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

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